First Paragraph:
Changing electoral systems is not easy. Politicians have
difficulty modifying the system under which they have been
elected. Large transitional costs accompany a shift from one
system to another; politicians will need to invest in new
campaigning, and a new system will introduce uncertainty
about their electoral prospects, possibly even endangering
their re-election. Politicians will also need to overcome
the transaction costs of securing a legislative majority for
reform; pro-reformers will need to override opposition by
antireform politicians. Further, agreement on one particular
system is difficult as different electoral needs will lead
politicians to advocate different systems.

Figures and Tables:
None.

Last Paragraph:Lastly, suggestions for future research are made. The
findings of this study are circumscribed by the small number
of observed cases and their selection based on the dependent
variable; it treated only three cases and included only
those of successful reform. We still know little about the
causes of electoral reform. In order to gain more valid and
generalizable inferences, we need to study cases in which
the dependent variable takes different values -- where
debates about reform or reform movements did not lead to the
legislation of reform or led to more modest reform, or where
electoral reform is not even on the agenda, despite the
presence of symptoms of system failure that have led to
reform movements in other countries. We also need a
systematic analysis of more countries that have variations
in explanatory variables so that we can see the effects of
those variables more clearly and eliminate alternative
explanatory variables. Accumulation of empirical data will
help us gain greater insights into the causes of electoral
reform and the behaviour of politicians and parties.